The motivation behind these internships is to work on his PhD dissertation, entitled “Apophatic Visions: Image Theory, Deconstruction, and Depictions of the Unknowable God in Medieval Visual Culture (900-1300).” He is developing this work as a doctoral candidate in Aesthetics and Art Theory at Universidad de Chile under the supervision of Andrés Claro. His co-adviser, Herbert L. Kessler, professor emeritus at Johns Hopkins University was also a Visiting Scholar at Columbia University in 2017 and encouraged him to choose Columbia for an academic visit: "The chance of working at Columbia’s extraordinary libraries – Butler, Avery, and of the Union Theological Seminary – has been absolutely fundamental for the proper conduction of my studies. At the same time, I have engaged in the University's community life, and I have also had meetings with the Department's faculty members who have arranged my visits,” explains Daniel. "All these experiences have benefited enormously the progresses of my PhD dissertation. In my thesis, I discuss the influence of negative theology, in particular that of Pseudo Dionysius the Areopagite, in the production of images both in the Latin West and the Greek East during the 10th-14th centuries and its potential relationship to contemporary continental philosophy,” he concludes.

Through the Kraft Global Fellows Program, I was given the opportunity to travel to Tunisia on a research trip for ten days. I was passionate about participating in this program because I wanted to explore issues such as racial discrimination and multi-faith interconnectivity.